Q&A: Moby Gets Back to the Music

Moby's biggest hits and most critically acclaimed contributions to popular music are songs sung by other people. "Natural Blues" from 1999's Play is so widely adored that the soulful strains of Vera Hadley's voice, which was sampled for the track, come to mind immediately upon mentioning his name. Gwen Stefani's presence on "South Side," the runaway hit from the same record, was an undeniable asset in securing the album's mainstream appeal. In the five studio records between Play and his latest, Moby's own voice, husky and unassuming, grew more and more prevalent on singles peppered throughout the years, as the list of famous friends he would work with, either on his own records, or on theirs, or at one-off gigs across the globe, grew longer. For every surprise guest performance that involved singing a New Order or Smashing Pumpkins song, Moby would produce a dancefloor staple or an electronic excursion that'd redefine current expectations for the genre.

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The voices of others were carefully conducted elements in Moby's music, and though this penchant for collaboration is present on Innocents, Moby's brand-new release out today, breakthroughs abound across the record from start to finish. The only way fans of Moby can see the songs of Innocents in full and in the flesh this year is if they somehow make it to the Fonda Theatre in Los Angeles next week, where Moby and members of the record's all-star cast — which includes Wayne Coyne of the Flaming Lips, Damien Jurado, Skylar Grey, Cold Specks, and Mark Lanegan — will perform the record over a three-night run. This decision, to play the songs of the record live on what he calls the "world's shortest, most provincial tour," is one that reflects a need to put the music before the needs of industry and cultural pressure. It's also a move that represents his confidence and creative process in a way we've yet to see from the soft-spoken guy in the glasses who loves to make music with his friends. We talked to Moby recently about that process, the freedom of making songs people don't buy, and more.

ESQUIRE.COM: Innocents is full of career firsts for you: first time working with an outside producer (Mark Stent), first crack at directing a video ("A Case For Shame"). What is it about this record in particular that prompted these milestones?

MOBY: My manager sometimes asks me, "Why do you still make albums?" It's 2013. People don't really buy albums. The people who do rarely listen to them from start to finish, which I fully expect and understand, and in some ways I find that kind of emancipating. The only pressure involved in making a record is to try and make something I really love, because as a 48-year-old guy making his eleventh record, there's no chance of making a big radio hit or a commercial record, so you don't even think about that when you're making it. It's just this sort of strange, earnest process of trying to make an album knowing full well that very few people will actually hear it. I think part of it comes from when I was living in New York and my friends were involved in what I'd call more humble, creative pursuits. One friend was an author, and he had a book that sold 20,000 copies, and he was thrilled. Another friend was a choreographer who maybe, if he was lucky, would have a thousand people see one of his shows, all told. Friends who were self-published poets, and playwrights, where their audiences and their expectations for success were quite small. It just made me think, "Why shouldn't my approach to music be similar?" Instead of having your criteria for determining the success of a record be the millions of records sold, ask yourself: "Do you feel like it has integrity? Do you feel like other people might respond to it emotionally?"

MOBY: The commercial success I've had has been very accidental. When I tried to have it, it didn't work. Now, it's just this nice idea, to make music for the love of making music, and to hope that it reaches people on a very personal emotional level, without thinking too hard about whether people are going to buy it or not. Try and be utterly in love with the process of making it, and really love what you create.

ESQ: That's only made easier when you're working with such incredible talent. The songs of Innocents are a handful of collaborations and you're no stranger to working with friends. What did you glean from this familiar approach to Innocents?

MOBY: The collaborations on this record are quite different, in that they're true collaborations, for the most part. When I've had guest vocalists on my records in the past, they've been singing songs that I've written. I would rarely get them to actually write anything. When I was at university, I was obsessed with early 20th-century art, the Dadaists and the Surrealists, and the Surrealists had this game called exquisite corpse. It's an automatic creation game: You write a word down, hand it to the next person, they write a word, they hand it to another person. At the end you unfold it and see what everyone else has written. The first line they came up with was Le cadavre exquise boira le vin nouveau, or "The exquisite corpse drinks the new wine," and that's why it's called exquisite corpse. It's this idea of people handing creation back to each other, and that's how these collaborations happened. I would write a simple instrumental, and then I'd hand it off to Mark Lanegan, or to Cold Specks, and they would write lyrics and vocal melodies, and they'd hand it back to me, and I'd rewrite the song based on what they'd done. I don't use this word often, but the genius of the people that I worked with, they can't repress it. When people are very idiosyncratic and truly gifted, like the people I collaborated with on Innocents, they can't suppress that. It comes through in the lyrics and their melodies. It comes through in the tone and timbre of their voice.

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ESQ: And we'll be seeing this live — and for a very limited time only — in Los Angeles later this week, from what I understand.

MOBY: I'm doing what I maintain is the world's shortest, most provincial tour: It's only three shows and it's at a venue that's within walking distance of my house. The main reason behind it is when I go on tour, I stop making things — you go on tour and you're playing music live, but you're playing songs you've already written. It's fun, it's interesting, but you're not creating anything new. The main reason I'm not touring is simply so I can stay home and make new music, which makes my manager crazy, because no one makes money staying at home and writing new music that no one may ever hear.

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